Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States

America’s 46th president, Seamas McDoherty-O’Rahilly, fresh from his commencement address and honorary doctorate at Notre Dame in May, 2013, set himself to put things right with Catholic voters. He had angered them by banning Polish surnames, leaving Sitko, Czarobski, Lujack and others languishing pseudonymously in the record books. In addition, after the election, which he had won with heavy Catholic support, he had come out as a Presbyterian.

At the commencement he announced revocation of the Polish-name ban, and a week later he paraded distant Catholic cousins at a White House reception. But what really did it for him was an unexpected shift in Catholic thinking on political-economic matters.

Officially and with considerable grassroots approval, the church began to emphasize the seventh commandment (as Catholics number them), “Thou shalt not steal,” somewhat to the detriment of its longstanding emphasis on the Catholic sixth, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and the don’t-even-think-about-it 9th, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

Similarly, new emphasis was placed on the Catholic tenth, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods,” rarely invoked and largely replaced with social-justice exhortations. No change was apparent in emphasis on the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” as in opposition to abortion and capital punishment and in its ongoing flirtation with pacifism.

The shift to the anti-stealing seventh came gradually, as Catholic shifts always do, though far less gradually than most. It was virtual confiscation of money and property by the government from citizens and their companies, mainly by way of the money-printing spree known as the stimulus bill that got the bishops off a dime.

Then came the auto company bailouts and subsequent transfer of ownership. “It’s the Chrysler thing, stupid,” anti-Obama publicists said when they weren’t saying, “It’s the economy, stupid” and “It’s the inflation, stupid.”

Implicated in this was the car czar, an auto-industry newcomer under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for activities predating his czar appointment. Under his management, for instance, General Motors became known as UAW Motors. The Treasury department played its role. “Treasury hath given, treasury hath taken away” was the relevant campaign slogan. Major banks found themselves owned in part by the government.

It became too much for the bishops, until then vocal almost exclusively about abortion and immigration. The boldest of them counseled withholding Communion not only from abortion-enablers but also from various abrogators of property rights. Several Catholic senators switched to suburban mega churches rather than be embarrassed.

Rome finally spoke. Even when supporting a free market, Pope John Paul II had said that the market should be “appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the State,” giving what some called a license to steal to creative officials. But the newly crowned Pope John Paul III quoted a 16th-century Jesuit named Mariana, who said, “The private goods of citizens are not at the disposal of the king.”

Times were a-changing. McDoherty-O’Rahilly climbed on this churchly bandwagon and sailed ahead toward mid-term elections with the wind at his back.